I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a stabilizer system, and more specifically to a stabilizer system associated with the steering skis of a snowmobile for smoothing out the ride when the snowmobile vehicle is traversing irregular terrain.
II.
Discussion of the Prior Art
A suspension system for a snowmobile body typically comprises a pair of shock absorbing struts, which are independently coupled between the body/frame of the snowmobile and its pair of left and right steering skis. For example, the West et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,143,729, assigned to Monroe Auto Equipment Company, describes a snowmobile suspension system where each of the steering skis has a strut including a tubular housing attached to the bottom portion of the snowmobile body, and a second tubular housing is telescopingly disposed within the first tubular housing and is connected at its lower end to the ski. A reciprocable piston rod is attached to a portion of the vehicle, and there is a coil spring surrounding the rod and acting between the vehicle body and the portion of the strut coupled to the skis. While such a suspension helps to eliminate the jarring type of shocks occasioned by traversing various obstacles and uneven ground, the vehicle body is subject to sway during a turning maneuver because of the centrifugal force and the rather large strokes permitted by such prior art suspension system.
A partial solution to the roll or sway problem has been the use of a torsion bar. As is set out in the Yasui et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,567, which is assigned to the assignee of the instant application, a torsion bar is carried by the snowmobile and it is operatively connected to the suspension struts so that it becomes loaded upon movement of the respective suspension elements during vertical suspension movement of the skis, but without causing loading of the torsion bar upon rotation of the skis as during steering. A problem still remains with torsion bar suspension systems if only one of the skis encounters a bump. Hitting a bump tends to amplify the upward pitch of the snowmobile on the vehicle's side whose ski encounters the bump. This is due to the extra spring force added because of the presence of the torsion bar. The torsion bar also causes the spring and shock of the ski, i.e., the one that did not encounter the bump, to compress, and this effect tends to compound the pitching tendency. The torsion bar does prevent excessive body roll due to the stressing of the bar during a turn. However, if it should happen that during a turn the inside ski hits a bump, the torsion bar can become quickly "unwound", causing a sudden loss of the stabilizing effect. This, of course, can result in unexpected handling changes.
Because of the above-mentioned problems, a snowmobile should not be designed to have a torsion bar exhibiting strong spring properties.